FanimeCon 2017 – Day 2

Fanime Day 2 was more eventful that Day 1. Almost everything I planned to do was done. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures today since I focused more on enjoying the con.

Woke up to Aru reading out my humidifier meter as if he were a weatherman. After a while, I greeted him a happy graduation before he left to attend his ceremony. Unfortunately, the site of the celebrations was a bit too far for our group to walk, otherwise, a lot of us would have celebrated along with him.

When the rest of the room (and some of the second room) were finally awake, we got ready and went down to Whispers, a local cafe/creperie, for breakfast. The eggs benedict was good stuff.

The Gaia Online industry panel was probably the most informative panel they had since I left the site due to bad management. With the old team back at the helm, the Gaia Online ship is being righted. Bugs are getting squashed, an overinflated economy is getting a fix, and updates to major features like mini-games and the mobile app are in the works, updates never mentioned with previous management. With the return of the original founders, I’m looking forward to a much better Gaia Online experience.

I didn’t attend the Voice Actors Q&A panel tonight. Instead, I’ll attend one focused on a particular American voice actress, Erica Mendez. She’s the voice actress of characters in many of my favorite anime series, so I’m looking forward to see what she has to share. Aru will be attending this panel with me.

We had our traditional Fanime dinner at The Grill on the Alley, Fairmont Hotel’s on-site restaurant. We also treated it as Aru’s graduation dinner. Over dinner, we talked out the Fanime experiences we had over the last ten years. As always, we had loaded mac n’ cheese and didn’t get anything off any part of the menu that wasn’t appetizers or drinks. Even with just the appetizers, we still had to pack food to bring back to the hotel.

After dinner, I chose to check out the Manga Library for myself. Aru and AvatarJT tagged along, along with one of our other Fanime group members, Jenelle, who originally chose to not join us this year but eventually decided to get herself a one-day pass (Nelly also joined us for dinner). The library was practically empty and the selections were pretty old. I’ve decided to donate manga that I don’t read to the library next year.

Dungeons & Dragons didn’t happen tonight. No new players wanted to experience the adventure planned for the “tabletop” this year (we don’t have a table, so we would have used the bed). Instead, we decided we might play another tabletop game down in the Gaming Hall tomorrow night.

What we did in place of D&D was listen to all sorts of nostalgic TV/cartoon songs. It was something that just happened because good ol’ JT was bored. But it made the night more interesting.

Plans for tomorrow: shop ’til I drop. Or at least I get everything I intended to buy. Budget’s limited, but I’m not leaving my tenth year of Fanime empty handed. There’s also the Erica Mendez panel I might attend with Aru later tomorrow afternoon, and possibly Expedition down in the Gaming Hall’s tabletop area.